The Art of Dominaria

Is it the stories of great heroes and ancient artifacts? Or is it that longing feeling of wanting to experience a time gone by? Today we take a look into the world of Dominaria, a world with an abundance of legends, many cultures and a rich presence of its history on the people.

Dominaria has succeeded in creating amazing pieces of art in its set, the vibrant colors of the world representing the rebirth of the world as well as putting callbacks in both its art, flavor text and card names. The set is praised for its strong cards and amazing works of art done by the various talented artists.

The first piece of I art I will talk about is Syncopate by Tommy Arnold.

Syncopate by Tommy Arnold

“For this piece, I asked Tommy Arnold to paint a spell that looks like how a corrupt MP3 file sounds.”
— Mark Winters, Senior art director

The definition of syncopate is “displace the beats or accents in (music or a rhythm) so that strong beats become weak and vice versa.” and the art describes the word well. The circular lines and the shattered glass effect that surrounds Teferi gives off an effect of a spell being ruptured and negated into near nothing, the art’s intended flow is also shown well, our focus is taken on the fire starting on the far left and then slowly it takes us to the focus of the picture which is Teferi stopping the fire from reaching him.

Dub by Bastien L. Dehame

Bastien L. Dehame’s art has always had a soft spot with me. Artists like him such as Nils Hamm and Seb McKinnon have this sort of style to their art which I love. The mist around the knight and the person dubbing him gives off a sense of quiet, the knight’s cape follows the mist surrounding him and dissipates slowly into the background. The panting is atmospheric and mysterious which is my favorite type of art.

Shalai, Voice of Plenty by Victor Adame Minguez

Another amazing artist bringing their artistic skills into Dominaria is Victor Adame Minguez. A piece of art with a central focus in its composition is often difficult to execute and Victor nailed it in this piece. The wings give a sense of scale and so does the background of the image, the angel is also placed in the center, making it stand out as the main focus of the painting. The background is also near symmetrical with the clouds spreading above her head and behind the wings, along with that, the detail in every feather is outstanding. This is truly one of the best pieces in the set and in my opinion the best piece Victor Adame Minguez has done in Magic.

The Mirari Conjecture by James Arnold

An ancient artifact that promises power and glory to anyone that owns it, the Mirari was the centerpiece of the Odyssey block and story line, it was first discovered by Chainer in an old mansion, it had promised him that it would give it tremendous power. It was then given to the Cabal Patriarch and it was kept in the Cabal Coffers as a trophy to the winner of an upcoming three-day tournament, where Kamahl had first seen it and obsessed over it. However it later fell to the hands of Kirtar as a present from protecting Cabal City from a dragon attack. It later then fell to the hands to Aboshan, the cephalid emperor who later died and the Mirari was then passed to Braids, the dementia summoner. Later on, Karn reshaped the Mirari into Memnarch who later spiraled into madness at Mirrodin.

The art description of The Mirari Conjecture reads as follows:
“Imagine trying to reverse-engineer a nuclear bomb from a fallout map—except they’re having some success with it.”

The art itself shows various calculations done by the wizards of Tolaria determining the power of the legendary artifact, the last chapter of the saga represents the tendency of the Mirari to double things in cards like the Mirari itself and Commander all-star Mirari’s Wake. The chalkboard style art reminds me of mathematics class which fits the art description quite well. Blake Rasmussen considers this to be the most flavoful Saga from Dominaria which says a lot considering all 14 of them are very flavorful.

That wraps up the article for today or more accurately “this month”, I hope you had as much fun as I did writing about this. The flourishing world of Dominaria created one of the most amazing sets to date with all of the powerful and very flavorful art sometimes referencing cards from the past. Not only that but the art of this set is top notch, I would recommend you guys to buy the “Art of Dominaria” book as I feel like its worth it for all the amazing pieces of art you get.

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